Aerosolized Gentamicin Reduces the Burden of Tuberculosis in a Murine Model

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and the lack of new antibiotics have exacerbated the situation. There is an urgent need to develop or repurpose drugs against TB.We evaluated inhaled gentamicin as direct respiratory system-targeted therapy in a murine model of TB. Aerosolized-gentamicin-treated mice showed significantly reduced lungM. tuberculosis loads and fewer granulomas rela-tive to untreated controls. These results suggest that direct delivery of antibiotics to the respiratory systemmay provide thera-peutic benefit to conventional treatment regimes for treatment of pulmonary TB. Tuberculosis (TB) is a chronic disease resulting from infec-tion with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. TB is a global health pandemic, leading to the death of over 1.7 million people an-nually (5). This situation is further exacerbated by the synergy between TB and AIDS (7), the failure of anti-TB vaccination, and the emergence of M. tuberculosis strains with single, mul-tiple, or extensive resistance to frontline antitubercular drugs (ATDs) (1). Oral therapies using the current regimen of ATDs are effec-tive but are associated with a number of significant drawbacks. Only a small fraction of ATDs reach the infected pulmonar